Amar’e Stoudemire Came Back And The Knicks Lost, So The New York Tabloids Made Fun Of Him

There were many reasons the Knicks fell 105-100 to the Trail Blazers last night. Letting Portland shoot over 50 percent rom the field is right at the top of that list. Getting off to such a terrible start (the Blazers led 43-25 midway through the second quarter and were still up by 16 with less than a minute to go in the first half) had a lot to do with it, too. And the fact that outside of Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith, the entire team scored 27 points (on 38 field goal attempts)? That was another culprit for sure. So what/whom did the Post and Daily News blame?

The best/worst part is when you looked at those back pages, you had to think, “Well, of course they did that.” You knew they were going to pin at in Amar’e if the Knicks lost and he didn’t score 50 points. And no, six points and one rebound on 3-for-8 shooting (and 0-for-2 from the line) in 17 minutes from a guy still trying to work his way back into the rotation and into basketball mode (he stepped out of bounds almost as soon as he entered the game) didn’t help the Knicks’ cause.

But neither did, say, zero points 0-for-5 shooting (0-for-4 from three) by Jason Kidd. Neither did the zero points on 0-for-5 shooting (0-for-4 from three) by Steve Novak. And those guys don’t have the excuse of returning from injury – they just had off nights. But Amar’e has the $100 million contract, so he also gets the flak – whether he was actually primarily to blame for the loss or not. And last night, he wasn’t. Just don’t tell our favorite headline writers that.